


Apotheosis in Reverse

by possumapologist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Lotor is alive, just angsty enough to be bittersweet, mild body horror, the scene in season 8 we all deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possumapologist/pseuds/possumapologist
Summary: Allura and the paladins retrieve Lotor after his mother frees him from the quintessence field. She doesn't hope for closure, just a tactical advantage. There is a war on, after all.But a little closure comes anyway.“Allura?” he rasps. Almost keens. His hand begins to tremble so she holds it tighter. How can he still look at her like that, like she hung every star herself? How can she let it move her, knowing what he’s done? He opens his mouth, but she interrupts.“There’s not much time.”





	Apotheosis in Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> When canon does you dirty, you write some fix it fic about. 
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> ~~Get out of the fucking robot, Lotor.~~

Castle Oriande reeks of wild quintessence. Raw and erratic, it makes a din in the aether, almost as if another rift to the quintessence field had been opened inside the very castle. Or a piece of the field has come back.

It’s making it difficult to find Lotor. 

And finding Lotor is a tactical necessity.

The paladins came here to retrieve him. Whether it’s a rescue or a kidnapping is irrelevant at a practical level. He must be separated from Sincline, because he alone knows all the secrets that made it dangerous enough to imperil an entire reality. He himself will be powerful leverage against Honerva and the Alteans she’d brought under her thumb. They might follow the queen mother, but it’s doubtful they’d be so eager to wage war if the emperor they’d deified were in the hands of the Coalition. 

Allura follows the faint flickers of his energy, leading the other paladins through the winding halls her people built in a time of myth. His quintessence should be simple to find, it is so singular and she is so familiar with it. Who else in this universe has that peculiar balance of both the wild energy that lay beyond the rift and the tamer power that suffuses their home reality?

But it is so weak, and there is so much other energy here.

Allura hopes that they aren’t too late. That there is something to find. That they haven’t taken this risk for nothing. She doesn’t let herself hope for more than that. That Lotor might be willing to actively help them, would even be sane enough to understand what that would entail after so much time in the quintessence field? A childish flight of fancy. The man she’d planned to rebuild galaxies with is gone, corrupted by the same lust for quintessence and bloodshed that had annihilated his sire first in soul then in body. 

She doesn’t think about the inflection point. It doesn’t matter when it happened, only that it did. Only that Lotor had betrayed their plans for peace. Only that Lotor spilled the blood of her people for power. That he’d have insisted he’d spilled  _ their _ people’s blood made no difference then.

Allura doesn’t think about whether it does now.

No, her bayard transforms in her hands and she sweeps another Altean off his feet and hopes that he doesn’t break his neck in the fall. A few have already died in the assault. She hopes that he wasn’t another, but she keeps going. The quicker they move, the fewer people come to harm. 

She believes that because she has to.

The hangar doors loom ahead of them, and without a word, the other paladins array themselves to give her cover. She nods her thanks, lets them read her promise to be quick in the tight set of her mouth, and enters.

Sincline looms in front of her, strangely dark but not dormant. Once, it had felt to her much like Voltron does, a different note in the same song, but now it oozes that wild quintessence like a wound gone septic. It’s energizing and repellent in waves, overwhelmingly out of phase and nothing like the reality-tempered quintessence that flows through and around her, knitting her universe together. It must be the source that’s tainting the whole castle.

Sincline is too young to have a will of its own, barely conscious at all, but Allura can feel it howl like an injured animal. Charged so full of wild quintessence, its constituent ships have fused together and become trapped in this form. It’s overextended, with no relief in sight. Nothing from the outside was ever meant to stay in the quintessence field as long as it did.

Allura remembers the feeling of it, of the place beyond the rift. Quintessence bearing down on her like noise, like  _ every _ noise, played all at once at every volume, forever. Except no, that wasn’t quite right. If you could find it in yourself to be still, to be quiet in the face of all that overwhelming static, you could divine meaning in the chaos. There was a kind of current, almost a song, in the way that wind weaving through mountain tops is a kind of song.

She and Lotor had heard it, just the once. Felt how it had echoed between them and through them and, for the briefest of moments, they gazed upon the countenance of infinity and were seen in turn. 

She had wanted to shy away, but Lotor had reached out. Or perhaps, more accurately, something in Lotor had reached out. Only later did she realize that the strange tang, the harsh notes in his life force were the same as the quintessence in the field. Was he reaching because of greed, or was he answering a call to come home? She doesn’t think she’ll ever truly know.

Here, standing in her place in her own universe, perfectly in phase, the quintessence field and its endless potentiality seem less sublime. There is something ravenous between realities, something that craves to  _ be _ , and to consume in the being. The mind, if such a word could even be used, stares out at them with a terrible jealousy. It is too vast to escape into any one universe through the infinitesimal gaps that allow each phase of quintessence to slip out and breathe life into the multiverse, too brutish to make real use of what tears and rifts come. 

Despite the interference from Sincline, this is where Lotor’s quintessence was leading. It seems to her that if Lotor was still inside it would only be because Sincline had become his coffin, but an intuition she’s learned to trust tells her to search anyway. Allura steels herself against Sincline’s wails and searches for the thread of Lotor’s life force, shifts through the wild quintessence for that little eddy of duality. 

There, she feels it. Diffuse and weak, but there.

Lotor.

Lotor, who revered Alteans above all else and yet had their blood on his hands.

Lotor, who looked at the weight of the universe balanced on her shoulders and called her mighty.

Lotor, who she’d hated and mourned, as much a casualty of the war as a combatant.

Allura jets over, lands on the hull near the pilot compartment. She runs her hand over the hatch, brushes her quintessence against Sincline’s to try to soothe it. It welcomes her touch, and when she nudges at the actuators for the hatch, it hastily opens them. Allura can’t help but gasp at what she sees.

Sincline isn’t Lotor’s coffin, but it’s a near thing.

Lotor, or what he has become, still sits in the pilot’s seat, though the distinction between ship and pilot is blurred to almost meaninglessness. In the unreality of the rift, simple matter, like what makes up a body, can succumb to will. It looks as if Lotor clung so tightly to Sincline he’s become part of it. The part of Allura that isn’t overcome by the horror of it can’t help but think it looks as if Sincline clung back. Maybe it has more will that she thought. Maybe Lotor wanted someone, something to reach for him so desperately it happened.

But Allura came here to leave with Lotor, and she still means to. She’s connected now to the collective soul of her people. She has the power to undo this.

In the biological and mechanical chaos, she can still pick out where his head is. She reaches out and brushes the backs of her fingers against the remnants of one high cheek. Then she digs deep, drawing from that great well of quintessence that’s caught in her like water behind a dam, and readies herself.

“Lotor?” She doesn’t think he can hear her. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know she’s there. “It’s time to go.”

The trick is this: the body knows its own shape. It’s only a matter of coaxing it along. Quintessence bleeds out of her skin and into him, stirring the memory in the atoms, reminding them of where they use to be. For a time they were a living creature, a piece of the universe that could stare out at itself. Filaments unwind from Sincline’s hull, turn from ore and circuit back into muscle and nerve.

Lotor shutters. Entangled in her quintessence, his mind can brush against hers. She tastes his confusion, his pain, his awful relief. If he still had tear ducts, he might have cried. He still might when he has them again. 

She keeps working.

Bones knit back together under her hands, skin retreats from the controls to cover them. Soft cartilage and delicate capillaries take shape again. She holds her focus, meters out her strength. She has never healed someone so badly damaged, but she can no more leave him suffering in such a half life than she could kill him to end his misery, so she doesn't falter.

When she withdraws her hand, Lotor sucks air into his lungs, new but exactly as they were, and his eyes flutter open. He stares at her, maybe through her, and he gasps in little short bursts, almost like he doesn’t remember the motions. Allura takes his hand and squeezes.

“Slowly now. Don’t fight the instinct.”

Now he really is looking at her, nothing but naked shock on his face. It’s a bittersweet feeling, knowing that she’s been privy to enough of his genuine moments that she can spot them even now.

“Allura?” he rasps. Almost keens. His hand begins to tremble so she holds it tighter. How can he still look at her like that, like she hung every star herself? How can she let it move her, knowing what he’s done? He opens his mouth, but she interrupts.

“There’s not much time.”

She pulls him from the cockpit, and for a moment it seems like he can stand but he crumbles under his own weight. She catches him before he can fall. Gritting her teeth, she gathers him into her arms and starts her journey back to the other paladins.

* * *

In any other context, Lotor in a human hospital gown would seem ridiculous. They’re patterned in tiny pastel flowers for reasons of tradition, inexplicably stiff for their thinness, and barely reach his knees. Who could imagine, the Galran Emperor by birthright and Kral Zera, submitting to such a thing?

But then, he didn’t, not really. 

During the escape he slipped back into unconsciousness and hasn’t woken since. It’s no surprise. His body must remember what it is. Must reckon with its return to the limits of reality. The ambient quintessence won’t feed it, and reality won’t allow it to morph to even try. 

Either Lotor will cope with his return, or he won’t, and it will take time for the final outcome to become clear.

In the interim, there is what care the human doctors can provide. Shiro was kind enough to let her bring Lotor to the medbay rather than having the doctors treat him in a cell. He was cautious enough to order Lotor confined to the bed, and so he was strapped to it with cuffs the humans brought just for such a purpose. She can’t find fault in the compromise. Once upon a time, she herself wasn’t so generous. 

Time on  _ IGF-Atlas _ is measured in hours and days, and according to the clock on the wall, it’s been at least two days. Her circadian rhythm tells her it’s also been two quintants. Allura hasn’t been sitting beside his bed the entire time, but she is now. 

Someone has gathered his hair over one shoulder. Perhaps one of the nurses. Allura doesn’t think she’s ever seen it arranged that way. It only adds to the strangeness of seeing Lotor laid low on a human ship. 

Earlier she’d reached out and laid her hand on his forearm, more by habit than intention, but once she realized what she’d done she couldn’t make herself withdraw. She could spare him such a tiny comfort. So now her hand sits on new skin pocked with the same old scars. She hadn’t meant to leave them, nor thought to wipe them away. She wonders which he’d have prefered. 

It’s easier thinking about that than considering what she’ll say to him when he wakes. If it’s even  _ Lotor _ that wakes. He might have already been consumed by the hunger between realities, and then there will be no catharsis for either of them. 

But no, she didn’t save him for catharsis. That was pragmatism. 

One of the monitors beeps softly, indicating a change. She isn’t sure which one, and, frankly, she isn’t sure what any of them measure. Allura reaches out in her way instead, trying to sense if Lotor has given up this body or accepted it.

He opens his eyes before she can divine one way or another.

She bites her tongue as his eyes roam the room, waiting for him to come around properly. She thinks of him as being able to see through shielding and deceit as easily as atmosphere, but his gaze is dull now. Perhaps that’s unfair. He’s not used eyes in a long while. 

“Lotor,” she murmurs, running her hand up and down his forearm. He turns toward her. 

Awe. That’s the only word she knows for that expression. She wants to hate it, but her lips turn up just a bit. He tries to reach, but the human restraints hold. 

“Do you know who I am?”

“Allura,” he answers, sure. He’s always sure.

“Yes.” She bites her lower lip instead of saying anything else. Part of her want to demand an explanation of  _ everything _ and part wants to tell him what he  _ will do _ to make it right and part just wants to cry, because for a moment in time she’d loved him and she misses loving him.

But she does none of that. 

“Where are we?” he asks.

“A human ship.”

He grunts, as close as he gets to outright denigration.

“Humans make spaceships, you know.”

His eyes roam the room again, this time assessing. 

“If you insist.”

He looks down at the restraints, tests them once, then gives up. His expression shutters, betraying nothing, just like how it would in the face of his many, many enemies. He didn’t used to shut her out in quite that way. But then, he still shut her out, didn’t he?

A heavy silence falls between them. 

He looks worse awake, drawn and tired. Fragile in a way she’s never seen him, like, perhaps, if she prodded just right, he would simply shatter into his constituent atoms. But his quintessence burns again, winding through those same atoms, so maybe it’s just more rest he needs. And maybe he’d rather she go. He's alive, and that's the most important thing the Coalition needs of him. Anything else can wait.

Allura starts to pull her hand away, but Lotor starts, reaching for her but caught fast before he can. She is frozen in place by the plea she sees in his eyes— _ don’t leave. _

Allura’s hand stays where it is.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, because that seems safe.

He laughs, a high, thin sound. 

“Finite. Does that sound mad? But I do.” He laughs again, and Allura feels a sick twist of unease. Who had she brought back, really? “This is terrible, Allura, I feel so small. Blind and deaf and numb and, and—I can’t believe I ever—” he takes deep breath, illustrative. “I can’t believe I could keep this up. How do you stand it?”

“I don’t think I quite follow.”

“Allura, you must remember.” He stares at her, wide-eyed and almost frantic. “You've been there, you know what it felt like. It let me stay. It wanted me to stay.”

“Lotor, that's not—” she stops, lifts her other hand and places it on the back of his. “I don't think you're well quite yet.” 

“Oh. You don't—” his voice trails off.

He looks strangely bereft, like he truly thought she'd understand. His gaze drifts away, suddenly distant. Turned inward. She never expected a look like that on him. He almost seems lost.

“You sound different. I must have been gone some time.”

“More than three deca-pheobs.”

“Just that? I thought it much more.”

She squeezes his hand. Time, she knows from experience, only has meaning in the relative sense. It’s dependent on velocity, on reference. On the other side of the rift there’s nothing to judge the passage, and therefore no meaning to it. It feels like no time passes and yet you’ve lived through the lifespan of a universe. No wonder he clung to Sincline, trying to ground himself.

He gestures dismissively with the fingers on his other hand, as if that could brush aside the eons he must have spent alone. Lotor shifts, adopts as relaxed a posture as he can manage, as if nothing at all is the matter. As if he meant to be here, in this moment. For a half-tick she believes the act.

“You brought me back, so I must have some use for you yet,” he says, a bitter smile twisting his mouth.

“I didn’t bring you back.”

“Yes, you did. I remember how you put me back together.” 

His tone defies her to argue further. How can he look so haughty in an enemy medbay? She huffs a laugh at the ridiculousness of him. Of the whole situation. Maybe she restored him, but no, she didn’t save him.

“Honerva dragged you from the rift. I don’t know what she meant for you, but she’s planning something terrible.”

If Allura had blinked, she would have missed the hurt that flashed across his features. She didn’t, but she lets him hide it without comment. 

“And you want me to stop her,” he says. “Consider it done.”

Allura shakes her head. Lotor can make anything sound so simple. He’s only just been snatched from the jaws of oblivion, and here he is, making her promises. Does he mean to keep them this time?

“It’s not going to be easy. She’s convinced the living Alteans to fight us.”

He can’t hide the flinch when she mentions them. 

“You’re still angry.” 

Allura doesn’t deny it. She is. She trusted him, and she still doesn’t know  _ why  _ he did it. What could have been worth throwing away lives that way?

“They worship you,” she says, trying to sound matter of fact. “You can talk sense into them.”

“And you?”

“They despise me.”

“You’re their princess.”

“Lotor, you’re their  _ god _ . And they think I killed you.”

He looks away from her then. So, this is what Lotor’s regret looks like. It doesn’t soothe the betrayal like she’d hoped it might.

“This isn’t what I wanted to happen,” he says softly. “I only ever meant to ensure there could be something of Altea left in the universe.”

“Prove that to me then. Make the universe safe.”

“I think we both know that's not in my nature.” On anyone else, that would be a self-depreciating sort of look but on him it's just sad.   
  
Allura reaches out and touches his cheek, right where marks to match her own had once appeared. His quintessence surges to meet her. It's more tangled than mixed, but while she can sense where the foreign quintessence has latched on, she could no more unwind it than she could separate the parts of him that are Galra and Altean.

“I know many fine Galra, don't disparage them.” Allura withdraws her hand, folds it in her lap. The other is still resting on Lotor’s. “I used to count you among them.”

“I am sorry.”

“Save your apologies for after the war,” she says. She meant to sound firm, but to her own ears she sounds as exhausted as he does. It was easier to hate him before she herself had her people's blood on her hands. 

He twists his hand under hers, tries to squeeze her fingers. His grip is weak, but otherwise it feels just like it once did.

What does it say about her that he can still comfort her?

“After the war, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> And then they both live goddamn it. Especially Allura. Allura saves the universe then goes to the space beach to sip space martinis.


End file.
